OFLUXO
Corp.
Kira Scerbin
At King’s Leap (New York, US)
reviewed by Philip Hinge
April, 2022
Replication, incubation, and imitation; Scerbin’s humanoid figures are suspended in an eerie dimension located somewhere between Albert Pinkham Ryder and Salad Fingers. The seven disquieting paintings in, Corp, feature a cast of bulbous headed figures armed with thousand-yard stares. Their thin bodies are comprised of sinewy muscles stretched over brittle skeletal frames. Despite their unimposing stature, the viewer is plagued by a persistent urging that there are ulterior motives at play. Direct and aggressive titles like, “Operating Model” & “Meat Reviver”, blend with compositional elements to allude to a world that is not as it seems. Scerbin’s slim surrogates belie the intentions of a shadowy cast who are confined to the margins and backgrounds of several works. More a means of demarcation than embellishment, slim artist frame’s isolate each painted specimen in space; a containment field preventing the artist’s abnormal spores from cross contaminating.
Scerbin imbues paint with its own life. Layers of pigment congeal into a literal skin complete with scabs, scrapes, and blemishes. The resulting surface tension discloses each work’s laborious manifestation. As if emerging from a painted primordial soup, bodies float near the surface of abstracted and ethereal backgrounds. “Meat Reviver” predominantly features a figure that looks like a mix of Grey-alien and an ancient fertility idol. Their large round face stares outward with an expressionless visage. With sticklike arms, they draw attention to their stomach, where a contented face smiles softly while sleeping. Directly across sits “Bullet Pie”, a small painting that traps a lexicon of sci-fi parturition in a spectrum of Bridget Riley-esque stripes. They share the room with, “Angel”, in which an uncharacteristically muscular nude figure emerges from a glowing portal. The anomalous yellow painting becomes the de facto anchor of the show, signaling the impending arrival of something unforeseen.
Quasi conspiratorial forces are at work in Scerbin’s paintings. In, “Biter in a Very Rich Hour”, a hairless figure in a star shaped bikini stands in front of a deserted field framed by power lines and speckled with distant wind turbines. Their glazed eyes and open mouth smile are emphasized by a halo of sky blue. The would-be holy hitchhiker is accompanied by a stick figure’s transparent silhouette; a ghostly re-assertion of Scerbin’s interest in the perception of otherness. In, “Dock”, a pale pink oval with a faintly discernable face sits on narrow shoulders in a non-descript void. They’re dressed in a white collared shirt with a tightly fitted blazer. A thin line with a bow encircles the perimeter of their head. Clouded flesh-colored eyes distract from the washed-out residue of an upturned smile. More than the other works in, Corp., the viewer can’t shake the sense of the character’s distinctly sinister agency.
Scerbin’s obvious commitment to her rigorous visions are what tethers her transcendent beings to us. Their idiosyncrasies effortlessly imprint themselves on the viewer. Each nervous peculiarity and nuanced discovery assert themselves as revelations of an effortlessly bizarre and freshly creative mind. ●
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